The present invention relates to an apparatus for automatically cleaning toilet seats in public and private rest rooms. Specifically, it pertains to washing, sanitizing and drying a toilet seat after each use.
Toilet seats have the potential to transmit infectious diseases from one user to another. In recent years, the importance of toilet seat hygiene, in particular, of public toilet seat hygiene has come to people's attention and there is a great public awareness. Thus, there has been interest in insuring the cleaning, sterilizing and drying of all toilet seats. To maintain the required hygiene standards, many different methods have been utilized, many of which have not been applied on a large scale because of their various disadvantages. Therefore, a great majority of private and public toilet seats are still manually washed and dried and on an intermittent basis.
There are various methods of cleaning and subsequently drying a toilet seat using a fluidics agent and gas. The preferred fluidics agent is a combination of water and a suitable chemical such as sterilizing agent that is used for cleaning and disinfecting the toilet seats.
In surveying the prior art, cleaning and sterilizing toilet seat devices are disclosed which have the significant disadvantage of being expensive and impractical to use. In general, these devices are extremely complicated, heavy and in many cases cannot be easily retrofitted to the present toilet system. Furthermore, most of these prior art provide limited of washing, sterilizing and drying and they are inconvenient to use. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,980,931 to M. Chaskel, 3,837,018 to W. Haberle, 5,022,097 to P. Pusic, 4,853,982 to A. Martinval, 4,063,316 to K. Hunninghaus, and 4,924,532 to D. Pennestri all are illustrative of such prior art. None of the cited cleaning devices, while may be suitable for the particular purpose which they address, provide a satisfactory solution for fast and inexpensive toilet seat washing, sanitizing. Many of them require some major changes in existing toilet structures. Further, none of the cited toilet seat cleaning systems use a separate conduit for the gas and fluid agents, or seal the seat while it is being washed and dried.
In view of the foregoing, there exists a need for a toilet seat cleaning system which provides cleaning, sterilizing and drying and which provides a universal and highly versatile system for home usage as well as public rest rooms. Therefore, the object of this invention is to provide an improved and an automated cleaning, sanitizing and drying apparatus which can be easily retrofitted to the present toilet systems in private and public rest rooms.
An object of the present invention is to provide an automatic system for cleaning, sterilizing and drying a toilet seat that is economical, easily retrofitted to the present toilets and will overcome the limitations, disadvantages and shortcomings of the prior art devices.
Another object of the invention is to provide an automatic toilet seat cleaning system embodying improved and advanced principles of design and construction.
A further object of the invention is to provide means to use water from the regular water main and through a specific conduit spray a fluid agent on all the surface areas of the seat wherein a user's skin comes in contact with and thus effectively clean and sterilize the seat.
Another object is to have a separate gas conduit for drying and deodorizing the seat.
A further object of the invention is to provide means to use electric power from the regular electric outlet for drying and deodorizing toilet seats through the gas conduit.
A still further object is to provide means to adjust and control the starting and finishing times of the cleaning, sterilizing, drying and deodorizing processes.
It is another object for the present invention to provide a system for cleaning and sterilizing, drying and deodorizing that is self contained and will not splash any fluid outside the toilet bowl during operation.